Jacob Vorstman trained in both child and adolescent psychiatry (clinic and research) and molecular genetics (research). Starting in 2001 at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands,his research focused on the psychiatric and genetic aspects of the 22q11.2 deletion. Between 2004 and 2006 and April 2016 and June 2017 he worked in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, United States of America.

Dr Vorstman is an executive board member in an international consortium for the study of the behavioural phenotype in the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, encompassing 22 research sites and funded by the NIMH ($12M). The analysis of consortium longitudinal IQ data in relation to the risk of psychosis was recently published in JAMA Psychiatry. Gradually he has broadened the scope from 22q11DS to the study of genotype-phenotype relations in autism and schizophrenia. His ambition is to further insights into the genetic architecture underlying these disorders as well as to improve methods to measure the associated phenotypes. Regarding the latter, he developed a smartphone application, in equal partnership with Professor Kas, which allows 24/7 objective registrations of social and communicative behaviours of individuals. This application has received considerable funding and is at present implemented in several ongoing studies generating the first data of this kind.

Following his PhD in 2008 he has worked as an assistant professor and PI at the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, UMC Utrecht where he supervised four PhD students towards a successful defense of their thesis and continues to supervise several ongoing trajectories in an adjunct appointment. As of September 2017 Dr Vorstman is appointed as an associate professor at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada and Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute.